YOU-TRUST.ME
The campaign ”Simply more trusting“

We established a start-up and offered users from dating portals a free service: A 'trust' icon which they could integrate into their profile, in order to be taken seriously as a person of trust. We combined this idea into that of a 'snowball-effect'. The more people who asked to be trusted, the higher the number of points rose in the icon. The result: The more points acquired the more trustworthy the person. Behind the website, which all users had to visit in order for their trust to be reciprocated, we hid a virus which could not be detected by any virus-scanners.

The first virtual AIDS virus in the world.

On the 1.12.2008, World-AIDS-Day, the virus broke out. At 9:30 a.m. over 30.000 computer backgrounds changed. The users were suddenly looking at an individual map which announced how they had caught and then spread the virus. The headline read: ”AIDS trusts you to blindly trust others“. At the same time the built-in trust icon which was integrated into over 30.000 dating profiles, automatically changed into an AIDS ribbon. The users allowed themselves to be infected, just as one can be infected with AIDS: through blind trust.

Through the connection of this campaign, our website 'you-trust.me', which offers information about AIDS, was accessed over 90.000 times.

The virus then uninstalled itself automatically on the same day.